Star Wars_ Fate of the Jedi 07_ Conviction - Aaron Allston [7]
Luke realized he was deflecting stun bolts, not blasterfire. That was not too surprising. Missing living targets with blasterfire in an environment this old and rickety would surely punch holes in exterior surfaces, causing decompression. Stun bolts hitting the same surfaces would do no harm. These attackers, successful or not, were at least disciplined.
Vestara came to her feet in the gap between shelves. The blaster crew turned its entire attention on her, as she was now closest and therefore most dangerous. Their choice freed Luke to act. He gestured, a heaving motion, an instinctive directive for an outpouring of the Force, and a small crate one shelf up hurled itself off the near shelving unit straight into the blaster cannon. The weapon slammed into the two operators, who momentarily ceased fire.
Luke could hear Ben now, or at least infer his position from the volley of small-arms fire sounding from off to his left. He could see the flashes of more stun bolts, but none came near him.
Vestara leapt to land in front of the tripod blaster. She lashed out, her lightsaber moving almost too fast to see, and the blaster fell into two pieces, severed just in front of the trigger housing. She instantly positioned the tip of her red blade under the man’s chin, allowing portions of his black beard to fall into it, sizzle, and vaporize. “I suggest you call off the attack.”
“I’m not in charge.” The man’s wide eyes belied the ferocity suggested by his wild mop of black hair and drooping piratical mustache. His voice emerged as a desperate squeak.
“Try anyway.”
“Mates, we’re caught! Shut down, shut down!”
The black-bearded attacker had told the truth. He wasn’t in charge, and none of the other attackers paid heed. Luke heard them keep up their volley of small-arms fire, heard the hum of Ben’s lightsaber, heard the number of weapons shooting diminish at a terrific rate. There was one scream and the air was suddenly flavored with the odor of burned flesh.
And then, silence—but for the hiss of air pumps and the hum of lightsabers. Moments later Ben led the other attackers back to his father, five men and two women, one man with an arm severed just above the wrist; pale and shocky, he kept a greasy black bandanna wrapped around his cauterized stump. None of the new prisoners looked too pleased with the situation.
Luke looked at the assailants. “Which one of you is in charge?”
They looked at one another. One, a Devaronian male with illuminated glitter decorating his horns, finally spoke. “Hallaf’s in charge.”
“Take me to Hallaf.”
“Hallaf’s in the brig.”
Luke blinked. “Hallaf’s in charge but is in the brig?”
Another attacker, a rotund dark-haired woman whose crossed bandoliers were now empty of weapons, spoke up. “Hallaf was in charge. He was going to do things the way she wanted them done. Bad business sense, no profits. So we threw him into the brig. I’m in charge now. I’m Cardya.”
“And who is this she you refer to?” Luke was pretty sure he knew the answer.
Cardya merely shuddered.
It took some time to sort out the details. She—a slender woman, brown hair and silver eyes, robed, flying a small ball-shaped vehicle of a type these smugglers had never seen—had arrived and spoken with the band’s leader, Hallaf. She’d left soon after, to the relief of all the others, who were intimidated by her forbidding manner. Hallaf, shaken, emerged to say that three Jedi would be arriving soon—
“Three Jedi?” Vestara sounded offended.
Ben grinned at her. “Smugglers know Jedi represent law and order, so that made us three targets they’d want to kill, not just two. Hey, welcome to the Order.”
She did not look at all happy with the unofficial membership.
Three Jedi would be coming, and the crew of this station would kill them in a fast and efficient fashion: by planting explosives on the boarding tube with an automated detonator. When the three visitors were in the tube, the explosives would blow, vaping